The Bell-Boy (10 page)

For they had reached the Wednesday Market and began to wind in and out of alleys crowded with people and merchandise of every variety. All at once Zoe spied a heap of fruit like spiked grenades inside a padlocked wire cage. In response to her query they stopped.

‘Those are the famous farewell-fruit,’ Mr Bundash said. ‘I’m most happy you should have seen them. It’s a lucky chance, since their supply is irregular.’

‘But why are they locked up?’

‘To prevent theft, young madam. Heavens, they are costly. Each one is worth’ – he did a sum on his fingers – ‘approximately seventeen American dollars. That’s more than the poorest of Malomba’s poor can expect in one month.’

‘They’re a little like midget durians.’ Tessa bent to sniff the cage. ‘Only they don’t smell as bad.’

The owner of the stall was looking on with the indifference of one who has seen many tourists stop and very few buy. Mechanically he took two flimsy yellow leaflets from a flyblown stack and handed one each to Tessa and Zoe. They read them while Tominy Bundash gave his own explanation, and from these two sources learned something of why this fruit was so highly prized.

Apparently the local name translated as ‘good night’, for when fully ripe they were the purple of a tropic dusk. The name had a jocular import, too, for the fruit’s many matchhead-sized seeds were violently poisonous and, coated as they were with jelly, slipped down all too easily with the flesh.

This flesh was indeed unimpressive-looking, with something of the bland appearance of tinned pears; but in trying to describe its flavour one approached the farewell-fruit’s central mystery. This was, that it had no flavour whatsover – or at least, no two people could agree on it. Each tasted something different and only the most prosaic (such as writers of travel guides and cookery books) tried likening it to the marriage of a strawberry and a cherry, or passion-fruit with overtones of peach.

Generations of writers and travellers, among them Lafcadio Hearn, had left accounts of the glories of this fruit, often reaching modest heights of lyricism. But according to many thoughtful gastronomes the most accurate description of all was by the National Poet, Bard-Professor Stiftu. In one of his
Essays
of
a
Hermit
he had written:

This fanciful exposition was not, according to the pamphlet, to everybody’s taste, any more than the fruit itself. It seemed that while they were listening to their guide and reading these leaflets they had been carried along by the flow of people and were now far away from the stall. They found themselves in an alley hung with low awnings which nearly met in the middle. Tessa and Zoe were made suddenly aware of how much taller they were than most Malombans. They stooped beneath these tarry baldachins and drew into their lungs a boiling reek of spice and aromatics.

‘Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom,’ Tessa began listing appreciatively. ‘We must be getting close.’

‘Yes, madam,’ Tominy Bundash called back, ‘we have entered the spice markets. And this’ – he dived down a passage – ‘is the street of essences.’ His voice hung in the air like dust and when Tessa and Zoe turned the corner he was at first nowhere to be seen. They were in a tiny lane lined with dark booths from whose depths rolled perfumes to make their heads swim. The heat was immense, and into it distillates and vapours leached and seeped from a thousand vials and jars, bundles of herbs and thuriferous twigs. A brace of dried bats hung from a string in one doorway, a plywood tub of smoked sea-horses stood in another. Within each hovel they glimpsed shelving with rows of bottles in which sullen oils smouldered. ‘Here, here, madams,’ and following the voice they came on their guide inside one of these stores talking to a plump oriental wearing what looked like a melted fez whose limp felt ballooned slightly above his ears.

‘Come in, come in, ladies!’ cried this man in a high voice. ‘I am Mr Mokpin. Ong Mokpin of Divine Essence at your services.’

He seated them hospitably on two upturned barrels
cushioned with squabs made of beige and stuffed with hay. Mr Bundash perched behind them on a sack.

‘Oh deary me, this heat,’ said Mr Mokpin. ‘First, refreshment.’ He tinkled a bell and a child ran up with a brass tray in one hand and a circlet of straw in the other. ‘No,’ he said to his guests, holding up his hand although neither had made to speak, ‘permit me to order. I can see right away that we wouldn’t be content with the usual gassy rubbish. Mops and Bolly and Coca-Cola are not for us. An infusion, perhaps? Something cooling to clear both brow and blood? I’m wondering about a blend of tansy and mulva flowers, but even as I wonder I’m thinking no, our guests are maybe still unused to our homeothermal practice of cooling ourselves with hot drinks. Ah, I have it.’ He addressed the child in a few abrupt phrases and it vanished.

Tessa, already excited by Mr Mokpin’s herbal precision, spent the short interim looking about her at his shop. The proprietor followed her evident interest with a smile of pleasure. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she thought she had never seen so many bottles. The shelves around the walls supported a positive library of oils and essences. Zoe meanwhile was examining a glass jar which held what looked like small lumps of rock under an inch or two of yellowish oil.

‘What are these?’ she asked.

‘Those, young lady, are bezoar. Do you know what bezoar is? No? It’s a stone which forms in the stomach of a goat. Ground up, it’s a wonderful antidote to all kinds of poison. I can tell you that in the old days the kings of this country always carried a few grains of bezoar powder in the gold heads of their wands of office and never went anywhere without them. Of course we’re talking of a period in our history which was very troublous and marked by assassinations and conspiracies of all kinds. I doubt if our beloved present King bothers taking bezoar about with him, but here in Malomba there are those who still swear by it. Ah!’

This interjection signalled the return of the child, brass
tray balanced on the little circlet of straw on his head. The tray held four glasses and a tin pitcher. Ong Mokpin gave him some coins and he scampered off. Then he poured a light blue liquid into each glass, watching the expression on his guests’ faces with some amusement.

‘Now, ladies, tell me the truth. You’d never seen a blue drink before, no? We call it
masan-masan,
which means “quick-quick”, because it acts so fast. Thirst simply melts away.’ He sipped at his own glass as if to reassure them.

The liquid, although cool, was by no means chilled; yet its effect was to produce a pleasant freezing sensation in the mouth which at once spread to all parts of the body.

‘It’s a mixture,’ said Mr Mokpin to forestall the obvious question. ‘It’s basically juice from the flowers of our belfry palm which you may have seen. Heavy clusters of violet bells? Those ones. Although in fact the blue colour of
masan-masan
comes from the empyrean crocus which grows in our forests here. You like it? You’re contented?’

‘We’re in bliss,’ Tessa told him happily. ‘It’s quite delicious.’ She turned and smiled at Mr Bundash on his sack, so that mournful gentleman should not feel forgotten. ‘I’m more than ever grateful to our friend for bringing us here. Otherwise we would never have found it.’

‘I doubt that, Mrs Hemony. Sooner or later the right people usually seem to end up at Divine Essence.’

She was at first disconcerted by his casual use of her name. That quizzical gaze from beneath the doughy fez irritated her fleetingly. ‘Oh, I suppose our guide must have told you just now who we were.’

‘On the contrary. If I remember rightly, he said, “I’ve brought you some visitors of remunerative possibility, respected Ong.” Mr Bundash habitually talks like that because he’s a Moslem. I’m afraid I tend to be more brisk because I’m a businessman … No, I knew who you were because of course I had received a communication about you.’

‘A communication? From whom?’

‘You can’t guess? Do you think you can drop from his sight so easily, above all in Malomba?’

‘The
Teacher
,’
she said. ‘What a fool I am. Of
course.
Oh, isn’t that just like the Master, Zo? He knows everything, thinks of everything.’ Abruptly, feeling they were so cared for although so far from home brought a rush of tears to her eyes. ‘Oh, divine. It just flows and flows. There’s no end to it, is there?’

‘Probably not,’ said Ong Mopkin. ‘At any rate he told me to expect you, described you and your lovely young daughter and said you were staying at the Golden Fortune Hotel. I myself left a message for you there.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Tessa. ‘I’m afraid we’re at the Nirvana. The Golden Fortune has been burnt down.’

‘You surely are misinformed, Mrs Hemony?’ Only hours ago Mr Mopkin had been lying on a vinyl couch on the top floor of the Golden Fortune, being assisted in his recovery from a sauna by two ten-year-old Chinese girls with tiny, fluttery hands.

‘I thought Lucky said …?’ She looked for confirmation at Zoe. ‘I suppose he made a mistake. Anyway, bliss. It doesn’t matter. Here we are, as you can see. Not striving, not grasping, but itching to know what you’ve got in all these bottles.’

‘To business then.’

It seemed to Zoe they spent hours in that stuffy room while her mother gave little cries and made lists. Certainly Ong Mopkin appeared learned. Latin phrases mingled with strange native names as stopper after stopper was eased and the essence assayed. After a time she became drowsy with the heat and fumes and voices and longed to be somewhere sharper and higher. She half-dreamed of the days she had spent with Ed in the thin air of Valcognano, talking of not wholly dissimilar things but among the sloping terraces of the Apuan Alps while he paid her court. Why did she think of that now? It came to her suddenly that there was
something about this podgy oriental which reminded her of Ed. It was maybe the mixture of languor and beadiness, of a man with each of his feet in a different world who had constantly to shift his weight from one to the other and ended up hovering in a slightly sinister way.

‘Vis
medicatrix
Naturae,’
Mr Mopkin was saying to her mother. ‘And we know how powerful it is, don’t we? Now take this, for example.
Melilotus
mortionis
officinalis
is its name, from the great herbalist who discovered it, Balbus Mortion. A very old man now, of course. Smell. An entirely new clover he found in this country growing only in Saramu Province. A most powerful emmenagogue, better even than fennel and rosemary. I see a big, big market for this. I’m also wondering whether you should get in touch with Mortion himself about a range of Turkish essences? He lives in Istanbul and although he is retired now … Yes, you should write him down. His first name is Balbus. Now, as to export and regular orders, I can undertake to supply …’

Half an hour later he was saying, ‘I truly believe we have several products here which are quite unknown in the West and which could become prodigious sellers. But if I had to choose one it would be this, Mrs Hemony.
Karesh
oil.’ The pudding-like fez nodded several times. ‘Of course we all know about the powers of auto-suggestion. But
Karesh
oil is truly a potent aphrodisiac for certain people.’ A peculiar scent drifted into the room.

‘Oh,’ Tessa cried, ‘I’ve smelt that before. Here in Malomba. Very recently.’

‘Perfectly possible.
Karesh
is a common vine here. It grows everywhere. The flowers smell like this, except of course the oil is immensely concentrated. Actually it takes one hundred and ninety pounds of flowers to make a single ounce.’

Zoe also thought she recognised the smell. Was it back at the hotel? Instead of Ed she found herself thinking of Lucky, since smells had that strange power of abruptly
banishing an image and replacing it with something quite else. He had a nice aura. As bell-boys went he was really rather a handsome little brat. Well, perhaps not
that
little; more or less her own age, although his voice wasn’t very low yet. He undoubtedly had lovely long eyelashes.

‘Packaging … Shipping … Pure Light Products …’

At last it was over and Zoe gently woke their guide who was slumped on his sack. Mr Bundash gave a squeak and brushed waking tears from his eyes. ‘Oh dear. Terrifying dreams, young madam,’ he murmured.

It was now long past midday and by the time he had led them back out of the labyrinth of the Wednesday Market Tessa and Zoe thought he looked so weary they insisted he should have lunch with them. Out of deference they ate in a Moslem restaurant. Plates of fluffy rice and delicately spiced pulses restored them although the food, coming on top of the morning’s heat and scents, made Zoe still drowsier. She thought of Lucky again and wondered what girls of her own age did in Malomba. Suddenly she felt the urge to get away from her mother for a bit, to be a little wild. As they left the restaurant she was full of sleepy yearnings for mild rebellion, and had slouched maybe half a mile beneath the blows of the sun before she was aware they had stopped and that her attention had been caught.

‘The place,’ Mr Bundash was saying, ‘has a thoroughly evil reputation, I regret to tell you.’ He was indicating something called the Punk Panther, which was possibly a bar or a restaurant or a night club or all three. It was painted black, including the window panes. It appeared quite shut at the moment and not a sound came from within. A black cat dozed on its threshold as if equably waiting; it wore a tiny brass ring in one ear. ‘They opened it about three years ago to take commercial advantage of the sudden increase in tourism. It quickly became known far and wide as a focus for immorality and drug-taking. A certain misguided tourist handbook – it only takes one! – saw fit to mention that there
are particular substances, plants and so on, growing in the forests hereabouts which have unfortunate hallucinogenic properties. Among these, I am informed, are certain of the species
amanita
and
psilocybe
. Being a local product they are of course exceedingly cheap.